Recommend me: Weird-Voiced Female Singers

looooove la lupe

Also happy birthday La Lechera!

don't forget my hero maureen! she might actually pay me a visit this fall on a trip east. kinda nervous...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LogZn8sQGUY

Oh man, Laser Pace. Awesome.

Soap & Skin? Not super weird but definitely not traditional pop either.

Some Brigitte Fontaine perhaps?

Cuban Haila Mompie has kind of an odd voice. 100% sure this is not what dog latin is looking for, however.

Really hate the pinched trumpet sound in the beginning, something very contemporary Cuban.

but like it overall.

Do you guys ever get ILX usernames in your head, too? I've been walking around for like the past five days saying "lil swayne of pie" to myself... I feel like I'm going nuts.

A lot of these are very dramatically weird, and my suggestion is just weird weird. Anyway, Jenny Wade of Rude Buddha, Vodka, Timber, Swans, etc. I'm not quite sure how she ever decided to *be* a lead singer, but over time I find her voice kind of endearing. The Timber cover of Television's "Friction" seems to only be available here, and is worth hearing...

http://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/timber-released-unreleased/

Oh, duh: Jennifer Herrema (Royal Trux/RTX/ Black Bananas). Didn't even realize for some time that her voice belonged to a woman.

How about Maja Ratkje? (Or is that just "doing weird stuff with a female voice"?)

im sure she's mentioned somewhere in the linked threads, but for those of you like me, who sometimes just dont follow the links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzmYA5imuyw

Another one that I've gone crazy over the years trying to remember: there was some twee minimalist pop band in the 90's, from Southern US I think, had a female lead singer with a really cartoonish voice. they definitely came to NYC at least once. Probably reviewed in chickfactor, had a catchy song or two, but I can't seem to remember the name. I *think* it was a one-syllable band-name. They were, you know, around...but never famous or anything. When I try to remember the band name, I always think "Doop" but that's not it. Probably played Mercury Lounge...

Smack Dab?

Yes!!!!!!!!

God bless you! I've been trying to remember that for years.

That is some classic Joan La Barbara. I misread that as "redundant gypsy" even though I already know the title.

xp Haha, no problem! I was going to mention her (Linda Hagood) earlier, but she could be a bit much.

Mimi Goese was one I thought of earlier
then Kristen Hersh came on my walkman too.

Anita Lane might fit toojust being reminded by the C&TCS thread

Hey. It's Jun Togawa!

Soap & Skin is phoney baloney. Yecch.

sidsel endresen - seek her albums with humcrush & helge stein which are bizarre smoky abstract vocalese - usually (on other albums) she's working a more conservative beth gibbons/ diana krall thing but she weirds it up a treat when she wants to.
also if you don't know les rita mitsouko you need to check them for catherine ringer's spine tinglingly screechy punk-chansonrie. i'd recommend "bestov" & "marc & robert" . padma talwalkar - best hindustani khyal singer i ever heard. tujiko noriko i find not much like björk at all, despite comparisons. thankfully she doesn't work predictable scale-runs, etta james wookie belches or b52s rip offs into her vocal style, which is considerably more breathless & minimalist. tsehaytu beraki worth checking - eritrean krarist & singer. some groove - sounds like black sabbath to me but then my brain is corrupted.
XP:mimi goese's singing on hugo largo's "mettle" album particularly but also her "soak" album under her own name. sainkho namchylak - tuvan throat singer who ventures successfully into free improv outer space.
stina nordenstam gets some stick for doing cutesy ickle high voiced squeak-singing jazz-pop early in her career, but became the utmostest deadpan noir-dramatist with her "dynamite" album, "morning belongs to the night", "the birds sing for their lives" and a buncha other stuff.

A lot of these suggestions are just weak singers who sing English with bad accents. Living in Europe long enough has cured me of any fascination I once had for such.

Mrs. Miller is something else though. I think she's brilliant!!

Pretty much all of the female vocalists mentioned on this thread will seem weird to western ears (sometimes SWM ones):

Carnatic Music Recommendations?

Ayelet rose Gottlieb

Oh yeah and of course The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson

Weird how there's so many Swedish female singers who seem to downright imitate her now, like the singer form Zeigeist, Malin Dahlström from Niki & The Dove, and Karen Park especially.

Anybody mentioned Grimes and Lizzi Bougatsos from Gang Gang Dance yet?

Karen Dalton. Gorgeous.

Ayelet rose Gottlieb

who I had mentioned on one of the threads I linked to, not that it's not worth repeating. She's not always that weird though really.

Lisa Gerrard has one of the most impressive and unusual voices. Hard to believe sometimes that it's all from the same person.

Charlotte Marionneau from La Volume Courbe

Marie Daulne from Zap Mama

Melissa Arpin-Duimstra does a nice hissing gas shoegaze coo with lovesliescrushing who out-cocteau the cocteaus by sounding more like thomas köner goes pop. really can't listen to liz fraser these days - often sings flat - embarrassing lyrics & cheap ethno-forgeries, honestly think alison goldfrapp is a better vocal technician. also julee cruise - want to hear her doing shoegaze? pluramon's "dreams top rock" & the one after deserve attention.

The point at which "weird-voiced female singers" or even "distinctive female singers" (because, honestly, what on earth is weird about Kristin Hersch's voice? Or Charlotte Marionneau's?) becomes just "recognisable female singers, let us list them."

Anyway, if we're just doing distinct, I'd like to add Alison Shaw of Cranes.

i don't really understand what is meant by weird so will go along with distinctive instead just so i can recommend romica puceanu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGYYtxJqFak

also idjah hadidjah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJDd49R6ZIU

what on earth is weird about Kristin Hersch's voice?

To be honest I have no use for Throwing Muses beyond House Tornado so maybe I have a different impression of them to everyone else, but certainly Hersh used her voice in a very idiosyncratic way on some of those early tracks. Thinking of the epiglottal garglings on Call Me, the way she jumps all over the scales on those staccato bits of America (She Can't Say No) and generally the way she would switch into different modes of singing within the same song, something very Monk-like about that.

Anna-Lisa Ingemansson

Huh. I guess that Hersch's voice is so familiar to me that I've stopped even thinking of it as strange in any way, but I guess I see your point.

not sure if annisette's voice is weird enough for this thread but i love her anyway. she sounds like a more tuneful yoko to me sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYX7ZdPOCpg

I wholeheartedly second Judee Sill, although I've always found her voice to be beautiful in its plainness. Wouldn't call it "weird" in itself really, but certainly atypical from the flourish we're accustomed to hearing from female vocalists.

I'd add: Kath Bloom, both members of CocoRosie, and I'm gonna go ahead and throw Antony Hegarty on this list.

I was thinking of adding Little Jimmy Scott cos he does sound androgynous enough to be a female singer.

& finding it very odd that Kristen Hersh's vocals on the Throwing Muses track I was listening to yesterday might not be viewed as odd. Certainly not the straightest sounding thing i could think of .

Might actually find Shirley Collins's voice odd in its lack of affectedness though.

Well, I dunno. This thread is really just hammering home the concept that there is such a much narrower range for what is considered a "normal" female voice. Or maybe people have higher expectations of "perfection" or accomplishment from a female singer in a way that male singers are expected to have quirks or idiosyncrasies which would be unacceptable in a woman?

Wondered that about the two that I posted (I don't think either are 'weird sounding' - and their 'distinctiveness' is perhaps contingent on how familiar you are with music from those places in those genres)

caveat: I'm not all that big on quirks or idiosyncrasies in vocalists

Well, the OP said he liked unusual male voices but wasn't well informed on unusual female voices. I think this thread is just a response to that request for information, really.

xp

Anne Briggs

urszula dudziak
flora purim

her voice isn't weird so much as it is a powerful deep bellow
one to watch for sure
https://circuitdesyeux.bandcamp.com/